Core Humanitarian Competencies Guide

This guide has been developed as a “hands-on” resource to help you to use the recently developed Consortium of British Humanitarian Agencies (CBHA) competencies framework in all aspects of working with your staff – we’ve called this the Employee Life Cycle.

We have designed the guide so that you can dip into it in as much depth as you wish – from a quick“if you only have time to read one thing”, to recommended additional reading if this is an area that you wish to go into further. It has been produced on behalf of the CBHA as a practical working document, principally for humanitarian line managers, as part of a larger programme which aims to strengthen the capacity and ability of the NGO sector (“the Third Pillar”) to deliver appropriate highquality, effective and timely humanitarian responses.

The guide gives you a brief introduction to competencies and to the CBHA core humanitarian competencies framework in particular. It is then divided into sections based on the phases that you go through as a manager of staff in a humanitarian context - Planning and preparedness: recruiting and selecting; orientation and setting objectives; managing performance; personal/professional development and finally, debriefing.The overall benefit for you and your organisation in using this guide is to:

Help you to deliver a more effective humanitarian response by supporting you in the selection and management of your staff

Support you in using the CBHA core humanitarian competencies framework which has been developed to increase the capability of your organisation to respond in emergencies

Introduce an objective way of assessing your people’s competencies and development requirements

Increase the professional approach to managing people in your organisation; encouraging the use of a quality, standard and consistent way of assessing staff competency